EDITOR'S TABLE. 



411 



cecded in doing has been to observe 

 and detect the significance of certain 

 practices of the Australian tribes 

 which have never been observed, or 

 at least never understood, before. 



At a certain time of the year, it 

 appears, each totemistic tribe goes 

 through elaborate ceremonies of a 

 purely magical character for the pur- 

 pose of promoting the growth and 

 multiplication of the particular ani- 

 mal or plant, if it be one useful for 

 food, with which the tribe is identi- 

 fied, or of antagonizing its evil ef- 

 fects if it be of a hurtful character. 

 As " there is scarcely an object, ani- 

 mate or inanimate, to be found in 

 the country occupied by the natives 

 which does not give its name to some 

 totemic group of individuals," the 

 general scheme of things is pretty 

 well looked after in the various cere- 

 monies that are practiced by the 

 different groups. Attention is here 

 drawn to the essential difference be- 

 tween religion and magic, religion 

 being an attempt to propitiate or 

 conciliate the higher powers, while 

 magic undertakes to coerce them. 

 " To the magician," as Mr. Frazer 

 observes, " it is a matter of indiffer- 

 ence whether the cosmic powers are 

 conscious or unconscious, spiritual 

 or material ; for in either case he im- 

 agines that he can force them by his 

 enchantments to do his bidding." 

 The ceremonies of the native Aus- 

 tralians, as we have said, are wholly 

 magical. They have the same kind 

 of faith in their incantations and 

 other strange performances that the 

 modern man of science has in the 

 preparations he makes for a physical 

 experiment. The difference is that 

 imagination or the crudest kind of 

 symbolism has suggested the methods 

 of the savage, while a careful scru- 

 tiny and comparison of facts has dic- 

 tated those of the man of science. 

 The proprium of the savage mind is 

 an utter insensibility to evidence, or 

 rather a lack of all power of conceiv- 

 ing what evidence is, and therefore 



a total incapacity for feeling any 

 need of it. The scientific man, on 

 the other hand, feels that he needs it 

 every hour and every moment. 



It may be interesting to quote the 

 description given by Mr. Frazer, 

 after Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, of 

 the ceremonies performed by the men 

 whose totem is the " witchetty grub," 

 a creature much prized as an article 

 of diet by the natives. 



" The men of the witehetty-grub 

 totem repair to a shallow cave in a 

 ravine where lies a large block of 

 quartzite, surrounded by some small 

 rounded stones. The large block rep- 

 resents the full-grown grub; the 

 small stones stand for the eggs. On 

 reaching the cave the head man of 

 the totem group begins to sing, while 

 he taps the large block with a wooden 

 trough, such as is used for scooping 

 the earth out of burrows. All the 

 other men at the same time tap it 

 with twigs of a particular gum tree, 

 chanting the while. The burden of 

 their song is an invitation to the in- 

 sect to go and lay eggs. Next, the 

 leader takes up one of the smaller 

 stones, representing an egg, and 

 strikes each man in the stomach with 

 it, saying, ' You have eaten much 

 food,' after which he butts at the 

 man's stomach with his forehead. 

 . . . Ceremonies of the same sort are 

 performed at ten different places. 

 When the round has been completed 

 the party returns home. Here, at 

 some distance from the camp, a long 

 structure of boughs has been got 

 ready ; it is designed to represent the 

 chrysalis from which the fuU-grown 

 insect emerges. Into this structure 

 the men, each with the sacred design 

 of the totem painted in red ochre and 

 pipe clay on his body, enter and sing 

 of the grub in the various stages of 

 its development. After chanting ^ 

 thus for a while they shuffle out of 

 the mock chrysalis one by one, with 

 a gliding motion, singing all the time 

 about the emergence of the real in- 

 sect out of the real chrysalis, of 



